Black Children and the Dictatorship of Whiteness – Crianças negras e a ditadura da brancura

Many of us have seen the short film of a high school student named Kiri Davis in which she revisited a sociological study conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940s. For the study, the Clarks asked black children if they preferred to play with white dolls or blacks dolls. The majority of the children preferred the white dolls. In 2006, Davis conducted a similar study in order to measure if values of black children had changed in the past 60 years. In Davis’ study in a New York school, 15 of 21 black children chose the white doll over the black doll. The hypothesis was that black children even today reflect values of mainstream society that associates beauty and goodness with whiteness.

The results have proven to also apply to Brazil and Mozambique. In her study of 26 girls in a São Paulo school, aged 9 to 12, in which 12 were Afro-Brazilian, Roseli Figueiredo Martins found that only 2 Afro-Brazilian girls chose a black doll when asked to choose the doll that they preferred. In Mozambique, psychologist Vera Cruz interviewed 500 children between the ages of 4 and 11. 258 were boys and 242 were girls. The results showed that 88 percent of the children thought that white women were prettier than black or mixed race women. The interesting thing is that the children were shown a photo of the same woman representing all three choices. The photo of the woman’s skin was manipulated to appear white, black or mixed race in each of the photos with hair and clothes being the exact same in each photo.

Also similar to results of the Clark test, Gérson Alves da Silva and Sibela de Barros Mata Vasconcelos conducting research with Afro-Brazilian children in the Brazilian state of Alagoas found that black children that live in predominantly black communities and that are less exposed to media outlets like television have higher self-esteem than black children that live in more racially diverse areas and are exposed to different forms of media. Although I don’t advocate racial segregation, this is a clear example of why there is a need for things that are specifically devoted to certain populations.